


The Most Realistic OC-centric Fanfiction Ever

by idiotsammich (god_is_undead)



Category: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Coruscant is a cool place, Germs, So you want to go to a different dimension do you, hilarious to me, honestly there’s not much more to this just read it and weep, ordinary people are usually pretty cool, probably not humorous to most people, the oc probably needs therapy and had a messed up childhood but probably can’t afford a therapist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 10:28:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13715757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/god_is_undead/pseuds/idiotsammich
Summary: What would really happen if your average nerd ended up in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.(It’s not funny. I think I’m funny…but I’m not.)





	The Most Realistic OC-centric Fanfiction Ever

So _._

_That happened_.

I can’t say that I’m incapable of emotional reaction as a rule (far from it), but anger—my usual go-to smothering agent for pretty much anything, including fear and sadness—won’t help me now. It wouldn’t change anything. Maybe it’s just shock, or personal disability to process the ontological and epistemological reality that’s quite literally all around me.

Anyway, the feeling is more along the lines of _fuck me, this is my life now_.

I’ve woken up in another…honestly, I don’t know what to call it. 

_Another place_.

That’s the Jedi Temple looking something like a futuristic Hagia Sophia perched atop an abortive pyramid, I appear to be on Coruscant, all the flags (an absolutely intemperate number of flags) around me are Imperial, and I’m 99.999% sure I’m not hallucinating because when I pinch myself it hurts. A lot.

I’m either in a coma, or science was totally right about the multiple universe theory but totally lying through their teeth about how it really worked (or, you know, they _just didn’t know when they said it_ —sometimes science is funny like that, and they’ll change their tune as soon as they have better information).

_Houston, we have a problem_.

Either way, I grew up on the BBC version of _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe_ —I’m prepared to accept the existence of space Narnia, should convincing information be put at my feet. On some level, I’ve waited for this all my life. That probably greases the wheels a little.

Well, here I am.

And therein lies the problem.

I push my glasses further up on my nose, switch my crossed knees as I sit on the bench because one leg is falling asleep, and stare at the Temple as if it somehow has offended me personally. _It kind of has, though. In a weird way. Maybe._

More importantly:

Problem one: I have no food or shelter, or any way to get either of the above through money or charisma, short of prostitution. I’ve never sold myself for money before, but it _is_ an option.

_It can’t be_ that _hard to get someone to pay you for sex, right?_

Something tells me I’m missing certain salient details, but I’m willing to overlook that for the moment until it becomes a clear and present necessity.

Problem two: I have no legal identification here. No papers, nada, and have no idea to what degree I need them, because it was a non-issue in all the movies and really, who aside from me even wants to see scenes about bureaucracy? Everyone hates bureaucrats in the first place and hated the politics in the prequels, so visiting the space DMV is right out. If such things are necessary for anything more complex than buying a space burger, I can’t function anywhere but off the grid. Public transportation on a local level, or going off-world on a public flight or a cruise, is off-limits to me. And if the Empire is any more unpleasant than the ICE under Hegel’s second iteration of a world-historic personage, that’s a problem. What if they take me for a Rebel? Do I need to go below grounds, to the Coruscant Underworld? That’s…questionable, isn’t it? I’m a nerd, and not exactly street smart.

Problem three: I keep sneezing.

As if I had somehow forgotten in the last millisecond, I suddenly pitch forward in a violent convulsion, barely able to turn my head into my shoulder in time before I honk out a loud and wet one. There’s a little wetness in my lungs, but I can ascribe that to a recent cold and poor recovery from pneumonia. People glance at me, momentarily startled by the noise, but just keep walking.

_Isn’t that just super sexy. Totally killing this space babe thing_.

I rub snot away with the back of my wrist and wish I’d somehow been provided with tissues, because this is really becoming unpleasant. It started with the eyes, at first. They still itch, and they’re watery.

“…Are you okay, miss?”

I look up suddenly and find myself looking back at a blue-skinned middle-aged man, with pinkish hair and a sympathetic look on his face.

“Yeah, sure, I’m fine,” I say, confused. “Why?”

“Because you’re all…puffy.”

“…Huh?” Eloquent, I know. I slay me.

“You’re all pink in the face. You’re human, right? You…I don’t think you’re supposed to look like that…”

“ _Puffy?_ ” I repeat, incredulous, but not strictly disbelieving the more I think on it. The last time I got puffy and pink and itchy I was having an allergic reaction, a dangerously severe one. I reach up to my face and feel around, surprised to realize that my lips, which _had_ felt somewhat strange, were on one side terribly inflamed. Just to check—because it happened last time—I pull back the sleeve of my shirt and…red hives splotch my skin from my wrist to my elbow, and extend up what’s not uncovered of my arm. “Oh…okay, that’s not good.” And still, emotions fail me. It simply…is what it is. Just more icing on the shit cake.

“You should go to a med center,” he said. “That looks bad.”

_Med center? Oh, right, hospital_.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say no, that I’ll be fine, but…this hasn’t been getting any better. Instead it’s rapidly been getting worse; I just have a tendency to ignore physical symptoms until I’m literally falling over, and the sneezing, the bad feeling, _has been getting progressively worse_.

“I will,” I decide. “Uh…where is one?”

“I’ll take you,” he said. “I’ll be faster than by airbus, and it’s too far to walk.”

I agree out of hand, as I stand up and walk with him. I get no unpleasant vibes off of him, no sense that he’s anything but well-meaning. He looks, aside from the powdery blue of his skin, like an ex-friend of mine’s dad minus the glasses, so maybe I’m biased. There is obviously the possibility he’s actually an analog of Hannibal Lecter because obviously he can’t look like Galen Erso…but if I go into anaphylactic shock, same difference. But I can’t imagine a serial killer would want someone who won’t stick around for the fun anyway.

“Those are interesting clothes,” the man remarks.

I look at him, confused. Then I realize that what I’m wearing, while it isn’t scandalous, is itself curious enough to draw someone’s eye a moment, even if no one has either stared or said anything. Jeans aren’t exactly a thing here, and neither are printed t-shirts.

“Oh, well…they’re from home.”

“Where is home?”

“In a galaxy far, far away,” I say, in absolute deadpan.

The man laughs. I don’t elaborate. It’s amazing what kind of crazy things you can say to a person that they’ll take for a joke, or else find some way of rationalizing.

I follow him to a public speeder lot in the shade of one of Coruscant’s soaring spindles, and slip into the passenger’s seat.

“You sound Corellian,” he remarks, conversationally.

“I’m not, really,” I reply, feeling vaguely queasy as he pulls out of his parking spot and soars high up into the air, joining the arteries and capillaries of Coruscant’s skylanes. Now is a terrible time to remember I don’t like heights, but the scale is almost like being in an aircraft—well, it all pretty much _is_. A small, convertible aircraft, leaving the ground below in almost panoramic abstraction.

“There’s the Jedi Temple,” he said, pointing at the horizon. “Have you been to see it, yet? It’s been turned into a museum now, but I remember when the Jedi were more than just a figment of the past…” A cloud passes over his face. If I blinked, I would have missed it. “Most people think they were all smoke and mirrors. A bunch of tricks. They weren’t, as I live and breathe. They had strange powers.”

“How long ago was that?” I ask, lifting my head.

“Oh, it has to be almost twenty years since…My neighbor at the time saw the Clone Troopers marching in ranks in behind a shadowed figure in a cloak into the Temple; it must have been Darth Vader. He only saw for a moment, though; he was in his speeder, in the skylanes.”

A chill passes over me, accompanied by a spike of surprise. It sends a bizarre frisson of existential fear racing up my spine, of concreteness where minutes before everything had still had an element of unreality. _If this world is real, so are the people who are supposed to live in it_. I sneeze a few times.

“My neighbor,” the man said, softly, almost to himself. “He said…the figure was dressed in black. Wearing a Jedi robe. At the time, he said…he wondered why the Hero With No Fear was marching into the Temple like that. Clone Troopers in ranks behind him. He insisted that it was Anakin Skywalker, not that monstrosity wearing a mask. He said he knew, that he was sure, because he’d seen that black cloak enough times on the holo news.”

I sit up a little.

“The…Hero With No Fear?” It sounds familiar, but my brain has tripped a breaker, so even though it sounds familiar, it’s not exactly the most obvious thing. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi General,” he says. “Don’t you know who that is? You look old enough that you should remember the Clone Wars!”

A funny feeling comes over me as the hair rises on the back of my neck. I’d seen the scene several times, of course: the 501st marching in ranks into the Jedi Temple at dusk to the sound of John Williams’ genius, at the fore a miserable yet still humaniform Vader…

_Isn’t this a secret? No, it_ is _a secret_. Not even Tarkin brought it up in the open. _So how the fuck_ —

“And then straightaway, immediately after Skywalker vanishes…Darth Vader appears,” the man murmurs, absorbed in his thoughts. He glances at me, curiously. “The timing can’t be a coincidence.”

“Um…are you asking me a question?” I ask, in a very small voice. Because I have no clue what to say. Panic courses through me. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what speaking will buy me—I don’t even know why I’m so afraid; this is all so _incredibly_ unreal. Somehow, it’s even more unbelievable than just being here. This is ridiculous…

“Just making conversation,” the man replies. “Just idle speculation.”

_Idle speculation?_ The silence is deafening in my ears, but my would-be savior appears not to notice my distress.

“My wife tells me I should be more careful,” he continues. “Falin, dear, she says—in times like these, speculation is dangerous. And she’s right, of course. But then…if I disappear, isn’t that proof-positive that I’m onto something? And anyway— _you’re_ not likely to tell anyone, are you?”

“…No?” I say, because I won’t, and also because I don’t know what else to say.

“And anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it,” Falin went on, as if I hadn’t replied at all. “Except that…if it _was_ …didn’t the Sith act against the Jedi, a thousand years ago? Does that mean that Anakin Skywalker was a Sith?—

“I think Count Dooku was a Sith but _he_ was a Separatist.” Falin shrugged, thought pattern veering in a way that I lose track a moment. “Who knows, with these Force-users. Dooku died in the Battle of Coruscant—Anakin Skywalker killed him; he was too dangerous to live, anyway, and the Separatists had far too many friends in the Senate. He would have no doubt escaped punishment. Skywalker made the right choice. I grew up around the corner from the Jedi Temple, but they were always so…they had their head in the clouds. But one of them told me, once, when I was little: Sith always come in pairs. A Master and an Apprentice. Maybe Count Dooku had been dragging Anakin Skywalker down a bad path throughout the whole war? But Sith always kill their Master, that’s how they _become_ the Master. That would explain why Anakin Skywalker killed Count Dooku and didn’t bring him to trial. He was already a Sith, and he killed his Sith Master.”

I’m not quite sure what my face is doing, but it’s probably about as white as snow where it isn’t red and swollen with hives. I’m just staring at Falin, eyebrows somewhere in the vicinity of my hairline, and mouth slightly ajar. I really, really do not know what to do here. This kind of loopy, close-but-no-cigar…personal headcanon is…well, it sounds very much like people back home talking about what they think must be happening in Washington, honestly—but as yet there’s no real risk involved in that. The Empire is another matter entirely. _Falin, dear, speculation is dangerous_ —

“But maybe Anakin Skywalker was too loyal to the Republic to leave,” Falin said. “Maybe the Sith weren’t as evil as the Jedi said, and now they’re working _for_ the Empire.”

_Uhh..._

“What do you think?”

“Er…”

“Do you think it’s possible?”

“Uhhhhh…It’s…plausible?” I venture warily.

“You think I’m full of poodoo,” Falin laughed. “It’s fine, I’m not offended. But those of us on Coruscant—this planet has been the center of galactic politics for thousands of years. You’d be surprised what kind of things people know here. Rumors are our lifeblood, and it’s amazing what leaks out of the halls of power.”

_Um_.

“It’s…well…”

“Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

I shift in my seat, my reaction instant and reflexive, coming on with a suddenness and intensity that rattles my already frayed nerves. It must be because I’m already off-kilter, and less on my guard. My back goes straight to the metaphorical wall, and my nerves go through the roof. It’s a sad irony in that talk like this stirs up primordial silt so deeply embedded into the fabric of my psyche that I forget it’s there until something sets it off, and it’s already inflamed. I’m only used to people asking for my opinion so they can treat me cruelly when it doesn’t match theirs. _Loser, weak, child_ —

"You don't talk much, do you?"

I search for something to say. Only one thing comes to mind, and it already feels stupid, but it is literally the only thing I can think of—

“Oh, I’m not brave enough for politics.”

It sounds even sillier now that I’ve said it. _Memetic quoting, really? That's your response?_

Falin laughs, but it’s a somewhat subdued effect, and he leaves off the topic entirely. Instead he manages to give me a once-over glance, even as he looks around for something. I can’t see any street signs up here; I have to wonder how they manage to know where they’re going or where these lane lines go.

“How are you feeling?”

I lift my hand to give a so-so gesture, then my eyes freeze on my fingers: the middle and ring finger are swollen to twice their usual size and red, and now that I think about it, the ring I wear on my pinkie does feel a little tight. I pull it off to spare myself an accidental tourniquet, and find it takes a little more effort than usual.

“Starting to get really worried, actually,” I admit. I sneeze violently, and rub at my itchy, watery eyes.

“We’re almost there,” he says. “Just hold out a little longer.”

_If my throat starts to swell and close up_ …

Something finally occurs to me, and when it does I sit up, mildly disgusted with myself, and sure Falin is with me, too.

“Thank you for your help,” I say.

“No, don’t thank me,” he said. “I’m just doing the right thing.”

I feel like I should try and make an effort to show him that I really am appreciative. I do struggle to express myself healthily, all of them except for anger feel awkward in the offing. Well, I may be emotionally stunted, but I do try to make an effort.

“Well…maybe so, but thank you anyway. I’m grateful.” I make myself smile, and ignore the discomfort of how aware I am that my face is being contorted into the same position it assumes when I’m pretending. But I’m _not_ , and that leaves me feeling like just saying thank-you isn’t enough. I want something that is obviously sincere. My mother always made me express whatever feeling suited her rhinestone encrusted suburban bubble, and the outcome of that in my adult life is that I emote when I’m not happy and often remain utterly paralyzed when I am, incapable of identifying my own feelings with enough accuracy to act on them properly because I’m too dependent on cues and circumstance to tell me how I _should_ act. I never paid attention to it because my emotions weren’t what were wanted. I don’t even actually know for sure what a normal person would do to say thank you. Say it? But _how?_

Falin smiles.

In any case, I can’t think of anything and sense pushing it would be just as awkward, so I settle down to scratch almost absently at my arms. The Coruscanti skyline is something to behold, really, and even my acrophobia is too distracted to make much of a fuss. Is that the Senate building? Did they turn it into a museum, too, or—no, the Senate hasn’t been dissolved…yet, has it?

When Falin finally peels off and dives, I react instinctively, stretching out my limbs in a four-point wedge as my stomach leaps into my throat. The effect is not unlike that of a rollercoaster. It occurs to me that at no point did I bother to look for or put on a seatbelt, but it’s really too late for that.

“Don’t like speeders much?” Falin asks.

“What happens if someone falls?” I ask, clearing my throat, clutching the handle inside the door with a white-knuckled grip, as stiff and thick as my hand is, as I make myself sit up again as Falin levels out. _We just changed lanes. Jesus_.

“Oh, it’s very rare that anyone dies.”

I giggle high in my throat, involuntarily, but for the most part remain still. _That…doesn’t answer my question, though?_

“Lovely…”

The hospital is a dazzlingly white building that hurts my eyes, streaked in garish orange and flashing lights. It strongly resembles the Burj Al Arab, and similarly towers over every other structure that surrounds it. _Well, it certainly isn’t hard to see? Maybe that’s the point_.

I get a sense of monumental size when Falin veers out of the lane just as suddenly and dives into its shadow, and as we get closer, details emerge in what is, at a distance, a perfectly smooth façade. I see windows, I see people—humans and aliens—scurrying around like ants. As I have when in an airplane, I wonder at how individual people vanish but cars can be seen on landing approach. Honestly, that’s half the reason I swear we’re in the Matrix; procedural generation doesn’t allow for resolution that shows tiny humans even if it will show you cars.

_If we do exist in the Matrix, then maybe I’ve only been copied and pasted into another set of code_.

I chase the thoughts away as we land, swallowed up and made infinitesimal by the size and the breadth of everything that surrounds us.

“Can you walk?”

I look up at Falin, confused but smiling wryly.

“Of course I can walk. I’m having some kind of allergic reaction, I’m not on the last leg of chemo.” I get out of the speeder and follow him towards a wide-open intake, with large doors, lots of people inside, and some loitering outside.

“What is chemo?” Falin asks.

“Cancer treatment.”

“Never heard of it,” Falin says. “Where you come from, don’t they have immunotherapy?”

I shrug. Not exactly my area of expertise. I have liberal arts degrees, not an MD (much to my parent's chagrin, and sometimes I can't believe I got away with talking them into it).

There seems to be a standard paradigm when it comes to hospitals (I’d call it a Platonic archetype, but fuck Plato), because there’s a lobby with lots of chairs and lots of people sitting in those chairs, and a front desk. I go with Falin right up to the clerk, a Twi’lek woman. _I’ll be here a while, there’s a lot of people waiting. I hope there’s coffee_. Er—is it caffeine? No, I think it’s some cute referent that sounds just similar enough to suggest meaning— _caf_. Right. Although I swear to you, I’ve had some extremely enervating times in what this place calls a _refresher_.

Regardless, there’s a level of touristy glee that I don’t think I’ll ever fully get over, even if I spend the rest of my life here. The Twi’lek is dressed in a spiffy white dress that makes me think of Fritz Lang’s _Metropolis_ , particularly paired with the silver-gold droid beside her.

Checking in is completely par for the course, too.

“What’s the problem?” the Twi’lek woman asks, just before she lifts her head and looks up. Her eyes widen. “ _Oh_. Let’s get you checked in. What’s wrong? I mean, do you know exactly—”

“Allergic reaction to something. I don’t know what, though.”

“Are you having any trouble breathing?”

I open my mouth, blink, and now that I think about it, it’s only very slight, but…

_Yes_.

I nod anxiously, my eyebrows knit together in deep concern and touch my throat.

“Yeah,” I murmur, and glance at Falin. Falin’s expression mirrors my own. “I mean…a little.”

“Have you been having trouble breathing?”

“Well, uh…this is…pretty new, actually. But, um, everything else has been getting worse, quickly, so…still, it’s not that bad…”

The nurse stirs, then goes to work.

“Let’s get you in triage,” she said.

My eyebrows rise. _It’s bad enough that I’m skipping ahead of all these people?_ It doesn’t feel that bad.

I feel awkwardly like this is all a great to-do because I’m not bleeding and I don’t have a fever, and I don’t feel like it’s bad enough at any rate that I should get to cut in line, but…okay. I’ll let them make the call. I’m not a nurse, what do I know.

“Sir? Are you this woman’s husband?”

“Me? Well, no…”

“Then I’m sorry, but you can’t come with her,” the Twi’lek said apologetically. “Family members only.”

“I’m sure I took you away from something important,” I say. I feel badly enough for having taken up all this time as it is. “I wouldn’t want to bother you any more than I already have.”

“Nonsense,” Falin said. “Let me give you my comm address. I want to know that you’re alright. Will you do that? Call me when you know better what’s happening?”

“I—yes,” I say, surprised that he would even ask. I reach for my phone automatically, and when I pull it out his eyes lock on to it.

“That’s a strange comm device.”

“Er—this?” I blink at it. “Oh—it’s, uh…something from back home.” I hurry to unlock it and, when I realize that trying to input an alien phone number isn’t going to work in my Contacts list anyway, I just open up a note.

It’s longer than any country’s phone number I’ve ever gotten used to, but I dutifully write it down. Before he leaves, Falin hugs me.

It’s more startling than anything else—people don’t hug me, I don’t let them touch me most of the time—but after a moment of terrified immobility, I hug him back. It’s still awkward, but suddenly I don’t want to let go, I want to cling to him like a child—he seems genuinely nice, _and he’s leaving me here alone_ —and all of this is all overridden by the deep urge not to make a scene. Part of me is still chained by the need to not to embarrass my mother while she's having coffee with her friends. _Please don’t leave me_.

_He can’t stay, and it would be selfish of you to even ask, so stop it_.

“I will,” I say, smiling fixedly, a forced one, as I pull away and settle back on my heels.

“Don’t be nervous,” Falin says. “They’ll take good care of you.”

“Okay,” I say, for lack of anything more intelligent to bleat.

_I have his number. All you’re being asked to do is to check yourself into a hospital. Calm down, you big baby_. There’s no reason for the frustration that rises within me over my weakness. I know I can take care of myself, I always have. But the anger does give me a sense of grounding, and I feel better put together, somehow.

He hugs me one last time, makes me promise to call him, and then walks away, out the door.

I swallow around a strangely stiff, slightly pained throat, and look at the droid which has arrived to take me back. As he leaves, Falin sneezes.

* * *

 

*

In the end, an unknown virus caused two million deaths and hospitalized many millions more on Coruscant before it was contained, though was nothing but an insignificant drop in a much more infinite ocean. Death tolls varied from system to system, depending on government response time and quarantine practices, Imperial policy, and exposure. Number of deaths in the Outer Rim would always be a subject of far less certainty, but without the infrastructure or medical services far more people were affected and estimates rose to great heights; the illness became perennial, mutating just as regularly.

The Rebellion was blamed for a biological attack on the citizens of the Empire.

**Author's Note:**

> I only have one serious allergy, but I’m pretty sure it would literally kill me in hours at this point given how allergic I’ve become to related derivatives. Good tiems. It…wasn’t the most physically bothersome thing when I had an allergic reaction, mostly I just stared at myself in the mirror and realized my fingers looked like sausages and my lip was huge. Did not end up in the hospital. I’m not really an expert on it, I just have vague memories. Then again, maybe I did have more extreme discomfort, but neither of my parents were very keen on being concerned with any ailment of mine that wasn’t literally ebola. After a while I just…stopped paying attention too. To this day I tend to wake up and realize after the fact "oh hey I've felt like shit for a week maybe I should get something for that." I am mildly allergic to blue and brie cheese now. Guess who doesn't give a fuck and still eats it because it's delicious.
> 
> (If you’re wondering what the hell just happened, it’s what happened with Christopher Columbus. Populations with no immunity to European diseases. And the OC is just…well, she’s similarly vulnerable to everything around her. Sorry, it’s not exactly sexy or fun. I did say realistic, you know.)
> 
> There is a continuation in my head for this fic, lol, but it’s really kind of a twisted shitshow to start with and this semester is literally killing me so it's not happening. I’m seriously having health issues. And it’s just the one class. I can’t wait to go back to work, I love work. Work doesn’t have goddamn homework. Or econometrics.


End file.
